Another Groovy Resident Evil 4 Mystery
by Shozenji Chisago
Summary: Leon must endure torture when he meets up with a group of mystery solving teens.


Disclaimer: I don't own anything mentioned in this story.

Note: To protect the morals of our younger fanfiction readers, all the curse words have been replaced by the most nonsensical, inane substitutions available.  
Substitutions will be capitalized.

This isn't entirely my story. It's a collaboration between my husband and myself. We now present to you:

Another Groovy Resident Evil 4 Mystery

The ground is hard and cold beneath Leon's feet, and the gunmetal bites his hand in the chill air.

'I can't believe I'm going through this again,' he thinks. Only in Bruce Willis movies is somebody supposed to have to relive Hell over and over again.

There wasn't time to dwell on it. The President's daughter was out there, somewhere. He hated to think what she must be enduring, but he couldn't ignore his own worries either. What the hell was going on?

So much for the police escort that had been supposed to carry him. Leon wished they were dead, then quickly took it back; it was too much of a possibility.

Up ahead, a dog is yelping. It's a big one; must weigh over a hundred pounds. Its leg is caught in a bear trap which Leon is sure wasn't meant for bears. It had probably been meant for him.

"Poor guy," Leon mutters under his breath. With a quick look around to check for pursuers, he approaches the trap, hands held up and moving slowly so as not to startle the animal. It looks up at him piteously, and Leon decides it isn't going to bite.

The trap screeches in protest, but Leon forces them apart and returns to a standing position, sweeping the air in front of him with his pistol.

"Rrrrhank you!" The dog says.

"CRAP!" Leon answers, and blasts the dog right in the forehead. He stands breathing hard from shock, watching his breath come out in puffs of mist.

"Like, Scoob!" A voice in the distance reaches Leon. He turns swiftly, the laser point of his gun sight landing on a loping man with shaggy brown hair, a green shirt, and bell bottoms. A zombie?

Leon lets off a round just to the left of the shaggy man. "FREEZE!" He commands, instinct from his police training coming back from years past. "If you do not stop, I will fire!"

"Like, you shot Scoob!" The strange creature doesn't stop, but slows.

He sounds like Casey Kasum, Leon thinks idly. The things that come into your mind.

"Something was infecting that dog!" Leon kept his gun trained on the other man. "It was speaking."

"Like, he talks!" the weird guy protested.

"Why are your eyes so red?" Leon demands, and the shaggy man stiffens visibly.

"Uh... it's from the Scooby Snacks," he says.

Leon shoots him.

"HOLY FRUIT!" He screams. "GOOBER DARN FRUITING SOCK PLUCKER! Leon shoots him in the temple. He's never heard that much profanity, even out of people he's shot. 

The next hour of Leon's life is the worst since Raccoon City. The cops that had been escorting him are dead; brutally killed and burned by more infected humans. In some ways, these new monsters are worse than the ones he's known in the past; they climb, they communicate, they use tools. In other ways, they are easier to deal with; they aren't the soulless automatons that came from Umbrella's viruses. They don't rot right before your eyes, they don't lumber onward at the same agonizing pace. They don't vomit acid.

Leon wonders if he'd still be alive without his experiences in Raccoon City. Maybe surviving that city had prepared him for this one, he had to admit to himself. Maybe it had been for the best.

When the church bell rings, all the inhabitants of the small town turn. In a trance, they enter the church, chanting "Lord Saddler" over and over. Leon stands in shock, watching them leave him unattended.

Leon's communication link beeps, and a familiar attractive brunette appears.

"Why the FRUIT am I the only agent out here!" Leon demands immediately. "What, is Delta Force on their day off!"

The agent on the link shrugs. "You don't want to handle it alone?" she asks, sounding genuinely confused.

"Are you SHEEPing me!" Leon couldn't believe it. "There are dumpsters full of body parts out here! A cult of infected creatures is trying to kill me and everyone else in the vicinity!"

"I thought that was what you did best," she replies. "At least you'll be set for life after this."

"Great," Leon says. "I could use being set for life after surviving Raccoon City." He pauses for a second. "Hey, why wasn't I set up for life after that?"

Another shrug.

"Hey, you get the opportunity to serve your country."

"I didn't even get a lousy vacation!" Leon's complaints went on. "You'd think I'd get some kind of pension out of that! I was one of about twelve survivors, and I helped stop the infection from destroying the U.S.!"

Another shrug.

"You know where I went on my last vacation?" Leon growls. "I went to freaking Richmond Virginia, and I went on a bus tour with about fifty fat people that had never done a single thing that SAVED THE WHOLE COUNTRY! I didn't get a FRUITing letter of appreciation!"

A shrug and a yawn.

"SPIT on that!" Leon says. "Who the hell has to do this kind of thing alone? TWICE!"

The communicator clicks off.

"Hey!" Leon shouts at the now inert device. "Am I at least getting some back up!"

Repeated attempts to get the government off its ass come to nothing.'So what else is new?' Leon asks himself.

"What a groovy mystery!" A slightly retarded sounding voice was coming from close to the church. Leon crouched, trying to keep from being noticed. A brightly colored van with three people close to it were the source of the noises.

A blond man wearing an ascot was the mildly retarded sounding one. He was accompanied by a woman who appeared to be surveying the area, and another who looked like her brain might have been eaten by something from Umbrella.

"Gosh, these guys sure did massacre a lot of people!" the blond guy sounds like a bad upbeat announcer. All three outsiders look pretty mild to their situation, for Leon's tastes.

"Maybe we should look for the source of all this antisocial behavior," the girl who seemed to have a brain answered.

The blond man's eyes settle on Leon, and the agent curses under his breath.

"Look gang," the blond man says. "It's David Bowie (1)! He came to help us solve this groovy mystery!"

What?

Both females look Leon's way.

"Wow, it's just like when we met the Harlem Globetrotters," the ditzy redhead comments.

"Jinkies," the smarter looking one says, "or when we met Sonny and Cher, or the Three Stooges..."

"What the FRUIT are you talking about!" Leon snaps. He steps into full view. He doesn't expect any threat from these three, but they seem stupid and probably in danger.

"Gosh Mister Bowie," the blond man says. "We're talking about investigating the monster sightings that surround this town."

"I am NOT David Bowie," Leon growls, wondering how anybody could make that mistake. "You three better get back out the way you came before some of these psycho villagers chop you up and stick your collective parts in a dumpster!

"That never happened on any other mystery," the redhead replies. Leon wonders if her brain rattles around in her skull.

"We've investigated a lot of monsters," the brunette says. "This is Fred, Daphne, and I'm Velma. Our pals Shaggy and Scooby Doo are around here somewhere."

'No, they're not,' Leon thinks.

"You're all in danger," Leon says. "Your friend and your dog were already infected, and WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"

The redhead, Daphne, is trying to smoke the medicinal herbs she pilfered from Leon's case, apparently enjoying a blend of red, yellow, and green. She coughs and passes the joint to Leon, who stares at her.

"I need those!" Leon extinguishes the flame and tries to salvage his medicine, to the response of a three person disappointed groan.

"Don't be such a square," Daphne tells Leon. "I thought you rock stars did way stronger stuff than that."

"I AM NOT DAVID BOWIE," Leon says through gritted teeth. "If you go into my case again, I will shoot first and ask questions later, you get that?"

All three look shocked.

"You seemed evil in Labyrinth," Fred says. "I thought it was just an act."

"First of all," Leon sighs, "I was never in that movie. Second, I'm not evil, just trying to survive." After a pause, he adds, "but so we're clear, I've shot nearly a thousand people in the head, and three more won't lose me much sleep if it saves my life."

"Can I have your autograph?" Daphne asks. After fuming silently for a moment, Leon takes her book and signs: get the hell out of here, David Bowie.

"We can't leave yet," Fred says, "we haven't figured out who's behind these shenanigans."

"Christ," Leon mutters. Turning back to the small group, he says "don't get in my way."

As the hours pass in Leon's personal hell, he kicks himself every time he protects one of the Mystery Machine gang instead of letting the theory of natural selection prevail. A lack of medicinal herbs starts to weigh on Leon, since his unwanted partners keep smoking them. Try as he might, Leon can't bring himself to let them die. They aren't infected or evil, just stupid.

It wasn't until Velma announced that she found a secret door that Leon starts making serious death threats.

"There's a door here," she says, feeling a cavern wall.

"Give me a break," Leon grumbles. "Where would you activate it?"

"There's a shoe over here!" Fred calls from a cavern enclave. "I'm going to put a dead rat in it to open the passage (2)!"

"I WILL SHOOT YOU RIGHT NOW!" Leon levels his Killer 7 at Fred's face. "I SWEAR TO GOD, IF YOU START PUTTING RATS IN SHOES, YOU'RE A DEAD MAN!"

In horror, Fred drops the dead rat, which lands in the shoe. The wall Velma had indicated slides open. Leon shrieks with rage.

"FIRE TRUCK! WHY CAN'T MY PUZZLES EVER MAKE SENSE! WHY AM I CURSED TO PUSH STATUES AND SOLVE SLIDING PUZZLES AND PUT FREAKING RATS IN SHOES!"

Leon fires his pistol into the wall, then kicks it repeatedly.

"This must be his first mystery," Daphne says. Leon moans with despair.

As the gang walks down the secret passage, Leon continually mutters to himself about rats and shoes. At the end of the tunnel, Lord Saddler waits.

"I never expected you to solve the puzzle of the rat in the shoe," he says with admiration as the gang enter his sanctuary. "Clearly I underestimated you."

Clearly he does, because Daphne grabs his face before he can complete his long winded speech.

"Let's see who you really are, Lord Saddler!" She says dramatically, and rips his face off. "Eeeewww!"

Saddler howls with pain, his parasites bursting from his body. He returns Daphne's favor by ripping her face off, then turns to the rest of the gang.

"Wow!" Leon says. "Usually when someone dies, I swear revenge! This time, it makes me want to kill you less!"

The feeling isn't mutual. Saddler roars, tearing at the ground as he lunges toward Leon. The agent flips away, circling his nemesis. Saddler is too slow to threaten Leon seriously, and the Killer 7 explodes the hideous orange eyes one by one.

A final roar, and Saddler collapses, never believing that he was in danger of defeat. Leon stands over his corpse, and casually blows the trailing smoke from his pistol.

"That was so groovy!" Fred gives Leon a look which is a little too admiring. "Except for that Daphne died," he adds.

"Don't look at me like that," Leon says.

"Help!" a voice that is cute but annoying is coming from behind a locked door. "Help me!"

Leon rushes to the door, but finds it locked. "Ashley?" he says. "My name is Leon Kennedy. I'm here to get you out." Reluctantly, he looks at Fred. "How do I open this door?"

For a moment, Fred scratches his chin in thought. "There's a statue over there," he says.

With a groan, Leon pushes the statue. The cell opens.

"Oh, thank you!" Ashley runs from her cell. Velma and Fred leer at her measurements. "Don't look at me like that," she says.

"We better get out of here," Leon says, "so the government can keep ignoring my requests for help."

"Groovy!" Fred says.

"Jinkies!" Velma adds.

"What the FORK is wrong with them?" Ashley asks, and Leon shrugs.

The way out is easier than the way in. With Saddler gone, the smaller parasites seem unable to sustain themselves, and the infected hosts die off in droves. Corpses litter the town outside as the gang emerges into the open air.

"Jinkies," Velma says, "it sure is dark and cadaver laden out here."

"You said it Velma," Fred agrees.

Leon checks the time; it's 3:34 in the afternoon. No sun is shining.

"Something is wrong," he says.

Ashley clings to Leon and shivers. "Why isn't there any daylight?" she asks.

"Some monster is still here," Leon takes his arm back from Ashley's grasp and draws his Killer 7, motioning for her to get behind him with his free hand.

"Golly, another monster," Fred says. "With the rest of the gang dead, I feel all monstered out for today."

"God, I hope it eats you," Leon grumbles.

Green flashes start in the sky, crackling with evil energy.

"Jinkies," Velma says.

The green pulses grow brighter, cracking open the very sky itself. Three massive, clawed limbs emerge first, seeming to extend for miles. A circular body follows, staring down at the party despite having no eyes.

"Mortals," the foul thing's voice seems to come from nowhere. "My master, the irredeemable Xel'lotath, thanks you for destroying the Plagas. In gratitude, she wishes me to restore your sanity (3)."

Being the first to regain his voice, Leon says "uh... but I'm not insane."

"You're not?" Xel'lotath's servant sounded a bit confused. "But you've killed hundreds! All you loved lies in ruin!"

"I'm thick skinned," Leon replies.

"Oh..." the creature hesitated. "Well, uh...here you go!"

Fred and Velma's heads explode like underwater mines. Gouts of blood shoot thirty feet into the air.

"Wow!" Leon says. "Thanks!"

"Aw, shucks," Xel'lotath's servant says before disappearing through its portal.

"You're so cool," Ashley says, hugging Leon.

"I know," Leon says. "Now let's get out of here before anything else weird happens.

And with that, they were off.

Additional notes:  
(1) Is it just me (I know my husband doesn't think so), or does Leon look like a young David Bowie?  
(2) Okay, we have to admit, the puzzles in this game aren't nearly as bad as the previous ones, but still.  
(3) There's something about this game that reminded us of Eternal Darkness (I thinks it's the way the Plagas pop out of people). The sanity meter in that game was so cool. It'd be awesome if they'd make another one.


End file.
